Golden Tide (Song of the Aura, Book Four) Read Online Free

him. Steamclaw… the draik who had helped Gribly defeat the Sea Demon attacking Mythigrad. Lauro had always distrusted the speaking pit beast, and though he had spent far less time with it than had Gribly, he still thought he recognized the way this draik’s eyes flickered as it crossed the path. It was taking its leisurely time, because it knew that it could catch the fleeing forest-animals whenever it chose. Blast the thing.
     
    Soon it too was gone under the black eaves. Lauro cursed silently. He couldn’t afford to lose time, not when Gribly and Elia and thousands of men and nymphs needed him to find the Red Aura. But Steamclaw or any other draik here , in the Blackwood… he had to find out what was going on… Not to mention, a draik on the loose could end in his death later on, and most assuredly would if he wasn’t careful.
     
    Slowly, warily, he eased himself out of the underbrush, then stood, half-crouching, with his sword sheathed but ready to be drawn again at a moment’s notice. Brushing himself off, he double-checked everything from his belt to his shaved temples and back of his head. He had given up wearing the Vastic warrior’s topknot- now the long hair on the top of his head hung at his back, longer than he had ever let it grow before. He looked like a savage, and now he would go hunting like one.
     
    Without warning, something pierced him painfully in the neck. The sting was like the longwasp’s sting, but when he whirled and clapped a hand to his neck there was no stinger embedded, only a curiously smooth sliver of dark wood, which he pulled out quickly and examined.
     
    “Not thish,” he said… but his words were already slurred. “Noth… thish…” his mouth felt numb, as did his head… and neck…
     
    As he collapsed backwards in the loam and brush, he caught a glimpse of someone swinging down from the tree above him. His vision was growing dark, and he was too numb to move his head. Panic enveloped him, but he couldn’t scream. Sleep, and maybe something deeper and worse, clung to his eyelids, forcing them closed.
     
    Darkness came, and with it a woman’s voice. “Mistake, Openlander… you’re going to die for your mistake.”
     
    Was it just his imagination, or did his killer have a note of sympathy in her voice?
     
    “Burn…” he started to curse, but his tongue would not obey him, and his mind felt crushed under the weight of a single command.
     
    SLEEP.
     

Chapter Two: Those Who are Lost
     

     
    “Ghhh!” Lauro came out of the black sleep and lurched upwards, trying to stand, but a violent tug at his throat threw him back again. Coughing and reeling, his head ablaze with pain, the prince clawed desperately at his throat. Something was choking him; his fingers felt out hard metal, and with a shock he realized he was collared and chained to a wall. Darkness shrouded everything, but he had seen enough to know where he was.
     
    A dungeon. He’d been captured, probably by wood nymphs. No one else could have sneaked up on him like that. Poison darts… that was how they had done it. He remembered now. Aura! His head hurt as if he’d been smacked with a hammer. In the windowless dark, his hands found where the chain from his neck met the wall. Three feet, maybe, was all the room he had. Rage filled him: how dare these savages keep him chained like some common mongrel! Even criminals in the dungeons of Vastion were not treated so.
     
    Then another thought struck him: were they treating him as an animal because to them he was? Were they going to tear his flesh and eat him like cannibals? It was said, in some seedy inns back home he knew he should not have visited, that all nymphs ate their enemies. He knew it not to be true… but even the Sea Nymph tribes of the Inkwell had cut off contact from their wood-tribe brethren, so savage were the M’tant. He wouldn’t put it past the blasted cowards to eat humans.
     
    Well, let them try it. Lauro tried to spit, but his